Agree on this. I’ve got one of each. My good test taker moves very quickly and confidently through standardized tests and doesn’t stress. My not as good test taker (and to be fair he isn’t quite as strong a student as his brother) often runs out of time or stresses about getting the right answer instead of just moving along.
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I’m curious to what you are referring to in the school’s profile regarding rank. Our children’s school does not rank which I always though of a hinderance to the highest of the students, but given it has been in the top 10 schools nationally for years, that it may be a disservice to lower ranking kids who would have done very well rank-wise at another school.
On our kids’ school profile, there is nothing to glean other than a blanket comment that they do not rank. How does yours hint at a ranking?
I think the tests (ACT or SAT) is an outmoded measure. I saw so many kids getting extra time on the test for any number of a million ailments who appeared to be gaming the system. 2 hours extra for someone who has to take their blood sugar? When it becomes more of a game rather than an ability test, it’s not measuring the right things.
The challenge is how to replace it. Everything else on the apps are so subjective, that there needs to be some objective standard.
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And a student (again, especially on the ACT and that science section) has to be willing to learn and apply the tricks. One cannot just read through the science section and answer the questions. You must look at the questions and jump into the text to find the answer and you have to know the ways the test tries to trick you. Our S19 called BS on that and said he wouldn’t employ tricks and couldn’t understand why a college would want him to do that. I also don’t see what that science section tells any AO. S19 is a math and physics major at Bowdoin and doing very well. He’s clearly strong in the sciences but thought ACT science section was just dumb and was not going to spend time learning strategy to do well on it.
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Our school profile shows the weighted GPA for the top ten percent and then the top 20 percent so AOs can see where a student might sit in the class. We do not rank. You can’t figure out rank with this info but you can see if a student is in top ten or twenty percent. Maybe yours does not have that info.
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Perhaps not as a replacement of the ACT or SAT, math and science Olympiads can be used to differentiate the STEM students; however, these tests are designed to identify the most excellent students, so the top 2 to 5% (my guess) STEM students would not even qualify. With the rise in the number of TO colleges, students who want/need to distinguish themselves, will have no choice but to up their game and play in the Olympiads, thus driving the accomplishment or ability-based division even deeper and further, an un-intended consequence, that opposes the ideal of levelling the playing field for all with TO.
Some schools show a general grade distribution so you could make some sort of inference about where a kid would stand. I believe ours did this but went on to say it didn’t weight courses so a college should not make any inference about a student based on that alone. With only our experience as a data point, I believe the colleges did in fact do that. They could see that nobody had a 4.0 (or much close to it!)
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Yeah, that’s interesting. Not sure which is better at a selective high school.
I think our profile info was a compromise. We cut out rank to stop some of the stress over being a certain “number” but colleges can still see where a student sits a bit. Our school is big so top ten percent means being in the top 65 kids. I do think it’s really helped with the direct competition of student versus student.
@ZNewCollegeDad , ours was a selective (boarding) school. And to be fair, a huge part of the culture was around community, the value of each person, and being your best self. So it would have been disingenuous of them to “compare” the kid who was off to film school to the one who was off to MIT. Both top of their game, both similar admit rates at their desired colleges, but night and day.
On a related note, we had an interesting 1-on-1 conversation with an admissions counselor at a T20 school. She said that on the basis of the application alone, if you have a choice of whether to go to school A (easier) or B (more rigorous), go to school A. Since you are only measured in the context of where you go.
My daughters high school didn’t technically rank either however they did report deciles to colleges if you were in top 10%. You may want to ask the guidance counselor.
Hello! I am a graduating high school senior. This year, I was accepted into three of the colleges on your son’s list and I did not submit any standardized testing. I was also accepted into the Honors College at UMD. So, I would say—don’t send those scores in!
Also, tell him not to be afraid to apply to some more reaches 
good luck!
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Thanks. I was just curious as to what other schools did that don’t rank in the normal sense on school profiles. They won’t release anything other than 1 or 2 here, although the students have a general sense.
No single piece tells the whole story. But there will be a lot of exams in college, so students really should tackle those issues if they have them. I have students who will discount themselves by saying ‘I’m just a bad test taker’ which I think is a shame and also takes away some of the responsibility they have for improving. At any rate, saying the ACT is easy doesn’t make sense because if it was everyone would get in the high 30s, but obviously most don’t. Taking away scores just removes another data point in the admissions process making it more subjective, which obviously some students like if their scores disadvantage them.
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@ZNewCollegeDad , I think, though, it’s a bit more nuanced than that. For a middle of the pack kid, maybe it’s better to be top 10% at a regular school than top of the bottom half at Bronx Science. I tend to think most AOs can see through a lot of this though (which is why there are so many kids here on CC every spring shocked that they didn’t get into HYPS with their great stats.)
But if a kid is a standout at a school known for its rigor and high achieving students, there’s very little doubt they’ll be able to be successful at your tippy top school. This (as well as hooks) partly explains why those super selective high schools have the college matriculation lists they do. The top kids in their classes are pretty riskless! But also to your point, no school wants to have 10% of its incoming class from one or two high schools so that competitive part of it is real.
Personally, I think you should pick the school where you can get the best education and grow the most personally. These are four really special years of life – to reduce them to an extended college entrance exam denies a young person something of real value.
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Ok I guess I should say being a good “standardized multiple choice test taker”. Both of our kids are strong students who do well on tests in school. And S19 was just better at the SAT since he got a little more time per question. He showed me his last take home math final and it was insane. His college tests are the ones that really test critical thinking not the ACT or SAT.
And I stand by my statement that the ACT content is easy. It’s the perimeters of the test that make the difference - the quick pace and the science section that really tests no science ability. Then there is the pressure the kids are under to do well.
Anyway, I know plenty of kids who had great results without tests this last year. Maybe harder to know what’s up for next year but each school will handle it differently. Like I think I already mentioned, I would read each school’s test optional policy very carefully.
I agree. Kids at our competitive high school enroll in top colleges way down into the class. These kids are prepared for college and AOs know that.
Yes, that is the point I was making. If your school does not rank at all, it is better to be at the top of a regular school than somewhere other than top when rank can’t be delineated. These weren’t my words, but the AOs… And it was just a comment on the admissions process when looking at the same record with a rank and without, not in the intrinsic value of a more challenging education.
Yes, a lot of kids did well who wouldn’t have had those choices in a normal year, so I can see why they are happy.
Unfortunately, standardized tests are the ONLY standardized thing in the whole process, and people want to get rid of them in favor of subjective things like essays, which could be written by anyone. That’s great that you find the ACT to be easy, but the results show that the vast majority of students don’t, and I don’t think 95% of the population are ‘bad test takers’. Incidentally, processing speed correlates with and contributes to intelligence and performance, so it doesn’t make sense to discount the value of that. Kids who do poorly on the ACT (because of slower processing or whatever) can take the SAT. But at the end of the day, it is what it is and colleges are leaning more and more toward test optional because they can be more subjective in the whole process (which leads to more reliance on variables like ‘feeder high schools’ etc.). I’m happy to be done with it all at this point!
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